


Regarding the Rearing of a Successful Half-elf

by elvntari



Series: Canonverse Tolkien [8]
Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Altered Mental States, Brotherly Affection, Canonical Character Death, Daddy Issues, Dissociation, F/M, Familial Relationships, Father-Son Relationship, Feanorian Apologism, First Age, Fourth Age, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Kidnap Dads, Kidnapping, Leave Me Alone They Aren't Mutually Exclusive, Mental Health Issues, Mentions of Elros' Death, Mother-Son Relationship, POV Third Person Limited, Pro-Elwing, Pro-Feanorian, Second Age, Third Age, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-06-25 06:21:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19740004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elvntari/pseuds/elvntari
Summary: **INDEFINITE HIATUS**Regarding the rearing of a successful half-elf (specifically, Elrond Peredhel) there are a number of things to clear up. For one, there's the matter of his parentage, and exactly how he feels about that (it varies day-to-day, if he's honest) and then there's the matter of his upbringing, which is a different beast entirely. And beyond that? The collection of important people, friends, more-than-friends and in-laws that pressed their mark into him throughout his lifetime. Whatdoesit take to rear a successful half-elf?Or: snippets of Elrond's life and upbringing, as inspired by the wonderful Laerfileg when they asked if there'd ever be a sequel to The Curious Case of the Paternity of Ereinion Gil-galad. Here's your answer.





	1. A Star

**Author's Note:**

> So, blame Wren for giving me the good idea in the first place. Blame Elrond discussion in the SWG server for making me _feel_ things about him enough to have to write them down. Blame Shine. Not for anything specific, just for being a wonderful enabler. 
> 
> This is the spiritual successor and sequel to what I lovingly refer to as The Gil Fic(TM) because I can't really be bothered to type out its full title every time. The title is reused from a short original piece I posted on my tumblr about a half-elf adopted and raised by a priestess. It goes without saying that Maglor is quite far removed from a priestess, so you can probably already guess that this will be quite different.
> 
> I promised myself to only write one chapter fic at a time, I really did, but when inspiration hits there's really not much yu can do except sit your butt down and write.

The letter was from the High King. It was addressed to Elrond Peredhel, and it was sealed in blue wax—the luxurious kind that broke away from the paper easily, so that you could open it without tearing anything. Of course, Ereinion never called him Peredhel, and their private correspondence was always sealed so that it would be easy to tell if it had been tampered with (an old precaution from before what they had managed to wrangle into peacetime.) Not, really, that there was much point in his king sending him a letter—he had been staying in the palace for three weeks (“isolation will do you no good, Elrond”) and if he wanted to talk, he could just wander over to his quarters. 

He regarded the letter, then the servant who had brought it. They shrugged. 

He opened it. And pulled out the single sheathed bit of paper.  _ Stargazing this evening?  _ It read. He understood the weird manner of sending it. No one but the two of them would understand what  _ that _ meant, and the name was extra context, should he need it. He did not need it. 

“Thank you.” Elrond scribbled his response on the back of the letter in charcoal pencil and handed it back. The servant nodded and left. 

He stood up, restless. The king’s advice had also been something along the lines of “don’t coop yourself up in your room, either.” It was frankly rather annoying. Gil-galad wasn’t his father—he wasn’t even technically his older brother, if perhaps, loosely they could be called cousins—he had no say in how he chose to go about his mourning. He sprawled out over his bed. 

Father, father...he wanted his father. More than ever. 

The light of Eärendil winked in the sky. 

“Not you,” he said out loud, even if he knew there was no way the star could hear him. 

_ Stargazing.  _ That would be fun. It was code for ‘climbing up onto the roof of the tallest tower and talking to the sky for three hours straight,’ and usually it was something to joke about. He’d used to do it with Elros. Now, though, it meant something closer to ‘climbing up onto the roof of the tallest tower and telling your birth father that your brother is dead.’ Ereinion, for his usual concern, had hired a psychotherapist to speak to Elrond after the first few months of being completely and utterly unable to function normally, and they had told him that it was because he needed ‘closure.’ 

Closure. He would’ve laughed at that. Closure was the slam of the tomb lid, his niece shutting the front door, sealing a letter to sit untouched in a locked box until his dad decided to show his face again. Closure was  _ not  _ reopening that oldest of wounds just to please some bubbly intellectual with quill and notebook. 

But he had a feeling that Ereinion knew that. What Elrond really,  _ really  _ needed was to be angry, to have a chance to climb up to the rooftop and tell Eärendil that he hated him. He needed to say goodbye to his birth father, too, because Eärendil was someone he never wanted to speak to without Elros at his side again. 

There came a knock at his door. Elrond snapped up from where he lay. 

“Enter.”

Ereinion pushed the door open. “You okay?”

Elrond rolled his eyes. “As ever, your Majesty.” He noticed that his friend was carrying a bottle—probably of something alcoholic. So, it was going to be like  _ that.  _

* * *

Eärendil managed to walk in peace for a long time. He would’ve looked almost serene, to an outsider, making the trek from his house at the centre of Sirion, strolling with a slow, leisurely pace across the sands of the beach. If they’d had one moment to listen to his thoughts, they would’ve taken whatever impression they had of him right back. He was terrified, and he wanted his father. 

He knocked on the door of the cabin.

Voronwë opened up soon enough; it wasn’t like he wouldn’t. He’d probably seen him coming, too. Eärendil had decided that he wasn’t going to cry in front of him—he was just going to tell him, and then leave and go and work until all of the anxiety was drained away with his energy. 

Eärendil opened his mouth. Then he looked at his father, brow furrowed in concern, same perfect elven features as always twisted with worry. He meant to speak, he really did, but instead what came out was a sob. And then another. And another, and another and another until Voronwë was holding him and stroking his back and asking him what was wrong. Why was he crying?

But he couldn’t just say that. The words choked him from the inside. Horrible and fighting each other and stabbing him in the throat and “Elwing is pregnant.”

“Oh.” Voronwë froze for a second. Confused, probably, but he regained his composure fast; he always had. For someone who was about as far removed from the nobility of Gondolin as possible, he had managed to integrate well among them. “Eärendil, sweetheart—” Eärendil sobbed again— “Are these happy tears or sad tears?”

He couldn’t answer that. How could he possibly answer that? He shook his head and buried his face deeper into the fabric of his father’s tunic. He smelt of sea salt. He always had. Even back when the four of them were miles away from the nearest ocean, and the closest he got to a wave were the stories he was told. The sea had always comforted him: back when they first left Gondolin and came to the coast, his parents had taken him down to the beach and taken turns sitting him in their laps and telling him stories about what lay on the other side (whether that be the one for mortals, or for elves), but only Voronwë had told him about the ocean itself. He seemed almost in love with it. 

It had saved him, once. Maybe he was. 

Voronwë pried himself free and cupped Eärendil’s cheek. There was a softness in his gaze that made him want to start crying again, but he wouldn’t. Not if he wanted to speak. 

“How about I get you something hot to drink?”

Eärendil could’ve laughed at the simple practicality of the suggestion if he was in the mood. He was not in the mood. Instead, he nodded and wrapped his arms around himself, trying to imagine that he was still being held. It didn’t quite work, but if he made sure to keep the shaking breaths he took regular, he could calm himself down just enough to hear the pot being moved from the fire a little too soon. The leaves barely being left to steep before Voronwë was back with the cup.

He sat them both down at the kitchen table. 

“So, Elwing is pregnant,” he said, “was that intentional?”

Whatever Eärendil had been planning to say, it was gone now. His eyes pricked with tears again—Voronwë always seemed to be able to  _ tell  _ about this stuff, in the same way that his mother and Elwing could. Maybe it was an elf thing. If it was, he hadn’t inherited it. He shook his head.

“A baby isn’t a curse, you know,” Voronwë squeezed his hand, and he remembered vaguely being told how badly his parents had worried that they wouldn’t be able to have children, and how afraid they had been to lose him when he was born.

“I know.”

“And you’ll be good like your dad, won’t you?” Voronwë was stern and peaceful, but you could always tell who he loved by the way he looked when he thought about them. When he was little he’d have complained that it was gross, but now he just found his chest aching for his dad to come home.

“I want to be,” he said, at last, “I’m just scared.”

His father smiled at that. “Everyone is.”

“I find that hard to believe.” Eärendil raised his eyebrows: he knew his mythology, and he’d met plenty of overconfident parents in the twenty-eight-and-a-half years he’d been alive. 

Voronwë shook his head, but didn’t say anything to contradict him. Instead, he continued: “Eärendil, you were the sweetest and softest baby, like sugar and pastries and goosefeather pillows; I’m sure your child will be the same, and they’ll love you.”

“That’s the problem—” his voice cracked— “I don’t want them to love me only for me to mess up and ruin them, I—”

Voronwë squeezed his hand tighter. “You don’t live in a vacuum; your wife is there too, and you have me. You aren’t doing this alone.”

And with a jolt, Eärendil realised that his father was right.

* * *

They walked together in silence. It wasn’t an uncomfortable silence, but there was a sense of tension to it, as if the world’s breath was baited as they walked, and climbed up those steps to the high tower. Or, no, not the world. The sky. 

They took their places seated on the cool stone and watched as the last rays of sunlight faded away. Elrond found his eyes drawn to that one star, the same place where it always was: right in his line of sight as Ereinion poured out what, when he looked, he realised was red wine. He took a sip, feeling the way it tingled slightly where his lips were raw, and took a deep breath. 

“Fuck you.” He took another sip. “Fuck you for leaving, fuck you for never coming home, fuck you—just—just fuck you.”

Ereinion waited patiently, silently, never taking his eyes off the city below them. Elrond had been right. He knew the purpose of the conversation. 

He opened his mouth to speak again, but the anger was gone already (had there really been so little?) so, instead, he drained the rest of his glass, and carried on with a different tact. “Elros is dead. Not that you’d recognise that name, would you? I could easily be talking about any random person in the world, and you’d be none the wiser. I don’t even remember what you named us. Or if it was mum that did that—you know, she always loved you so much—she’d gather us up at the docks and tell us how much our father loved us, and that someday he’d be home and we’d get to see him again. And it never happened, but she told it with such sincerity we were convinced that it would.” He laughed bitterly. “But, yeah, as I was saying, Elros is dead. My brother, your son, and he’s—he was human, so we won’t see him again.”

* * *

The twins were so small. He had been smaller, he was told, but still, the twins were, so, so very small. It had only been a little while—barely a blink for an elf. It felt like an eternity to him, of long nights and busy days and trying so very hard not to mess up. And the fear when he knew they were twins that doubled his efforts to do good. It hadn’t worked. He knew it hadn’t worked the day his heart started to sing for the sea, and he knew he couldn’t be happy where he was. 

The child he used to be—the child he had taken the place of—had asked  _ “why not just come with me? Then no one has to be left behind.” _

_ “You know damn well why.” _ Elwing had folded her arms. She was right. He knew. 

It wasn’t really about them, but the danger looming around them from every direction, threatening to come closer every day. It was about the culmination of a life of running away and hiding and wondering if it could ever really, truly come to an end. It was the knowledge that his family would never grow up safe. Not even  _ he  _ had grown up safe. So, no, maybe it  _ was  _ about them. Either way, it was a problem.

And it was his sons, or the world. What kind of a choice was that?

So, he found himself standing at the docks as his wife adjusted his jacket—not because he needed it, but because it was one more moment that they got to be tender with each other. Her fingers brushed against his neck as she did so. They weren’t as soft as when they’d gotten married, but he liked the roughness and callouses; they were evidence that she still loved him, despite it all. She’d helped him work on the boat. 

She drew her hands away. They couldn’t keep pretending there were things she needed to tend to forever, after all. 

“The twins,” she said. He’d been dreading having to say goodbye to them. 

Eärendil knelt down in front of Haechen. He was so, so small. Still a baby. “Ada?” he tipped his head to the side and Eärendil was convinced for a moment that he knew something was wrong. He took a deep breath.

The words stuck in his throat. This again? He’d never been good with words, yet someday he knew he’d have to make his petition and if he faltered then, the world would end. He pushed on.

“Your ada has to go away now,” he began, “and he—I don’t want to, but it’s important, and if I don’t go, then I don’t know who will. In the meantime, you be good for your mother, okay? She’ll look after you, and I’ll come back eventually.” Haechen babbled a string of nonsense at him and Eärendil ached to pull him close and never let go. Well, he could follow through on the first half. 

He picked his son up and held him close, pressing a kiss against the side of his head. Airhen whined, and he picked him up, too. “I won’t be long,” he said, “I promise.”

* * *

“He never hated you,” Elrond continued. “Somehow. I could never understand why, when obviously we were less important to you than what—what even was it? Some prophecy, or something. Yeah, you saved our lives and also the entire world, I suppose I should be grateful—and I am! Really, sincerely, thank you for that. But you’re not my father, and everyone wants me to act like you are, and I have to play along because the alternative is worse and, Eru, I wish you had stayed a little longer so the pretending would be a little easier.

“Fuck. Fuck you.” He poured another glass. “You couldn’t even come to the funeral? I know they wouldn’t let you because you’re an elf, or something, even if that doesn’t really make sense, since Elros had elven lovers, and not to mention there hasn’t been a single generation of our family on either side that didn’t break the rules in some way. That was your  _ son.”  _ His voice cracked. “He was my brother.”

He jumped as Ereinion put his arm around him. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Elrond shook his head. “No, it’s fine I—I just. I don’t know.” He sat in his friend’s embrace. “I think—though—that felt good. As much as I hate to admit it, you were right about this.”

“And now you never have to speak to him again.”

“Now I never have to speak to him again,” Elrond agreed, and something—a weight indescribable—lifted. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As the broken record goes: please comment on the fic if you liked it. We fic writers spend lots of energy (I won't say time because I write fast) on our fic, and we gain energy back from comments!! More comments mean more fic and quicker updates. It's science!


	2. A Seabird

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At a formal dinner, Elrond is approached by Pengolodh, who has a few questions for him about exactly what happened to Elwing (and, by extension, what happened to him.)

Maybe the psychotherapist had been right in some way, because within the next year, he managed to go from 'depressed, sulking husk of his former self' to putting up with formal dinners. And everyone knew just how bad formal dinners were. Ereinion most of all, and he had to deal with them on an almost weekly basis, poor bastard (bastard...was that insensitive? It didn't matter, they were friends.) Elrond shot him a sympathetic look as someone asked him what it was like being raised by Lalwen. Ereinion's answer started with a very political "well, I was actually  _ raised  _ by Fingon…" and Elrond tuned out, taking a sip of his wine. 

"You're Elrond Peredhel, right?" A man with silver hair and dark eyes stood in front of him—he looked as if he'd just turned away from eavesdropping on the King's conversation. He offered him a hand. "My name's Pengolodh, I was the loremaster of Gondolin."

"Oh, of course, Pengolodh," Elrond said, and hoped that he wouldn't press enough to realise that the recognition was false. "How are your, uh—"

"Annals? They're going well enough, but there are some facts I'm missing; I was hoping I could discuss them with you?"

"Oh."

"As long as you're comfortable, of course."

Elrond wondered if he should be cautious. Pengolodh  _ was  _ from Gondolin, though, and Sirion, too, which gave them a little bit of familiarity. Apparently he was half-sinda, like himself. "I can agree to that," he said at last. 

"Brilliant." Pengolodh didn't smile, but the satisfaction showed in his eyes. “Do you mind if we speak now?”

“No, no—not at all.” Elrond shot one final look at his friend, who seemed to be laughing awkwardly (and diplomatically), then led the historian out into the gardens. They were a beautiful place, with trellis roses and fountains and all manner of things that, he observed, were distinctly reminiscent of the Havens in style. A lot of Erieinion’s palace was like that; it was like walking through a series of memories of places and times he’d never been. Sometimes Elrond would think about creating his own home in that way, except he only had memories of the House on the Hill, with the round windows in the attic and the perfect view. The place had been half-ruined. 

Or, no, he did remember Sirion, if he shut his eyes and thought about it. He remembered three places there. 

Pengolodh sat down on one of the stone benches and pulled out a notebook. “It’s your mother that I’m having trouble finding information on. Specifically, her time at Sirion between the months of the letters and her…” he trailed off, clearly uncertain of how to continue. 

“Transformation?” Elrond suggested.

Pengolodh nodded. Elrond vaguely recalled his mother talking about how the Loremaster had left on business somewhere else after the first letter from Maedhros arrived. It had never seemed that important to him, but she’d complained that not having him around was going to cause a lot of inconveniences, somehow. 

_ “All he does is read things then give them to you, nana,”  _ Elrond had protested. He decided not to mention that to Pengolodh. 

“No one seems to be able to give me a straight account of what happened—neither about her, nor about your kidnapping.”

Elrond could see why Pengolodh had approached him. The temptation must’ve been huge—to be able to speak to someone with direct connections to both events and to get his answers. He wondered how badly the loremaster would accost his father if ever he met him. Of course, Maglor would always say there was no one better to tell his story than himself, so it probably wouldn’t go down all too well unless if he was given free creative reign.

“Well, she stopped drinking, for one,” he began. And he told the story from there.

* * *

Elwing liked the docks.

Her advisors thought that she was stupid and lovesick for spending so much time there, but she liked them. She liked walking along the pontoons; she liked looking at the boats; she enjoyed watching the gulls peck at each other as they fought over fish. She’d imagine that they were siblings, that they were like her sons arguing over who got the last slice of cake. 

It made her smile. She very rarely found time to smile those days. 

Her advisors were wrong. Elwing did not go to the docks because she was stupid, not to waste time pining over her husband (she knew he wouldn’t want her to), but to find that little boat, right at the end, tucked in between two of the larger ships, where no one would notice it. She went with various supplies tucked in her robes, to pick them out and leave them just below the deck. 

One afternoon, she brought the boys’ nurse. 

“You’ll take them down here if anything goes wrong. There are just enough supplies to last you three days of sailing, and there should be money enough to keep the three of you fed and lodged until I can find you all again. It’s just a precaution.” The nurse had nodded quietly. She was always quiet. Elwing liked that about her, but then, it just disconcerted her. 

She’d rather have Eärendil as her co-parent. 

She resented not being able to take her sons down to the docks anymore, to gather them up in her arms and tell them stories about all of the ships, and the people who sailed them, to tell them about their father in the hope that they wouldn’t grow to hate him. But children—they talked. 

And if she was going to get her sons away safely, she needed silence. 

* * *

It wasn’t that Elwing was irresponsible, or even neglectful, she was just  _ busy.  _ Busy running the city, busy sending out petitions for help, busy waiting for their father. And when she wasn’t busy, she was lonely and sad, and she got very giggly after three glasses of wine, so she spent her evenings tipsy. She would tell them bedtime stories, and laugh at her own jokes, and give them sloppy kisses on the forehead. 

He thought, in hindsight, that she knew it was a problem, because when the letter from Maedhros arrived, she threw whatever bottles she could find into the sea, and told the staff that no one was to bring anything alcoholic into the household. She needed her mind clear, she said. She needed to think of a plan. Elrond also realised, as an adult, that she had had a problem, and he felt guilty for treasuring the memories of when his mother had seemed so lighthearted, knowing what they had meant. 

He knew that Elwing  _ had  _ come up with a plan, because the night before the Fëanorians came, she sat down with them and told them the stories in a voice that was only half-steady, and said that if everything went wrong, she'd try her best to find them and take them somewhere safe. He'd always wondered where exactly this 'somewhere safe' was. The plan failed. He never found out. 

Their nurse had skipped town the moment the fighting started, and locked them in a cupboard.

He sat down at his desk.

"You know, Pengolodh sent you a letter after your chat." Ereinion leant against the doorframe. "I don't trust that man. He doesn't listen to a word I say."

"That's because none of them are interesting," Elrond mumbled, reaching for the letter. It was sealed in blank, silver wax. 

"I'm hurt, Elrond. I can't believe you'd say that. I might have to exile you."

"Freedom at last." He broke it open. 

_ Respectfully, to Elrond Peredhel: _

_ I thank you immensely for your engaging conversation and manner; I was able to compile far more from your interview than anyone else's. Now all I that is left is to filter through what should be relevant to the Annals.  _

_ However, I found myself curious about one question after speaking with you. While I wouldn't say that you're known for despising your father, I did notice that whenever he was brought up, your manner would become cold and curt, whereas your love for your mother came through every word you spoke about her. May I ask then, if it be reasonable, that you explain why exactly you favour your mother so? Not for any grander reason other than curiosity, of course.  _

Elrond paused there. Pengolodh would've been closer with Eärendil; he couldn't rule out the possibility that he was trying to find something incriminating. He looked back to the letter.

_ Either way, I also have some questions to ask you regarding your kidnapping, so I feel that it would be wise to continue corresponding in such a way.  _

_ Thank you for a delightful and enlightening conversation,  _

_ Pengolodh _

“What does he want?” Ereinion peered over his shoulder. Elrond swatted him away.

“Just to unpack all of my darkest secrets.”

“Welcome to the club.”

“Do you think it’s weird that I don’t hold anything against my mother?” He asked. Ereinion furrowed his brow. Not a normal question to ask, he knew that much. He supposed to an outsider, his mother ultimately  _ did  _ choose to protect a shiny rock over going back to find him and his brother, but he couldn’t help but feel like something was missing from the tale. For one, he wasn’t even sure that Elwing had known he was still alive, or even that he was still in the city. The last thing he remembered her saying was an instruction to their nurse never to leave them, and to take them away to safety the moment something seemed to go even slightly wrong.

“No, why? I don’t feel anything against  _ my  _ mother.”

“I’m fairly sure you just appeared one day via mitosis.”

Ereinion laughed. “Really though, Elrond, they’re  _ your  _ feelings; you don’t need to justify them, just to feel them.”

“That was...actually wise.”

“Thanks, I stole it from Círdan.”

* * *

She loved her sons, she really did. If anyone asked, she’d give the whole world for them in a heartbeat. 

Maglor took a step forward. If she stood her ground? They’d take the jewel. They’d either snatch it from her hands, or kill her for it, but either way they’d get it. If she tried to run between them? Then, they’d almost definitely slaughter her. Murder was no novelty to them, even that of an innocent. She narrowed her eyes as she thought about her brothers, her mother, their bodies abandoned to the wilderness. And what if she jumped? She’d fall, but there was water below, deep enough to catch her, and she was the better swimmer. She had always been the better swimmer.

This would never happen again. 

“Elwing, I don’t want to hurt you,” The kinslayer called, offering her his hand. She shuffled back, just a little. The wind from the open windows whipped around her skirts, tugging at her legs, pushing her balance. 

She kept her eyes on the ground.  _ He’s not there. This isn’t real. This is just a nightmare, and you’ll wake up, and Eärendil will be there, and everything will be warm and safe and fine.  _

“Elwing, please.”

She looked up. This was not a nightmare. The man standing in front of her was no illusion, and the blood dripping from his cheek, over his hands, spattered against his armour wasn’t some trick of her imagination. It was almost comically bright; she’d always thought fresh blood should be dark as an ox’s. The kinslayer's eyes were wide, his gaze was unsteady, some burning anger throwing them off, a hungry desperation making him shake. 

She took another shuffling step back. She could see it. He was furious.  _ This can’t be happening.  _

What had her advisors said? She searched her memories for the words, shifting through fuzzy images of her father’s face, and the weight of the Nauglamir around her two-year-old neck. Had she really ever been that little? All she could imagine was the weight—the weight of that bloody necklace. Now it sat pleasantly cool against the heat of her skin. Somehow it had always managed to stay just at the perfect temperature. 

She’d never once taken it off in her life, she realised.

Something about Eärendil. They had said something about Eärendil. The thought of him calmed her a little. If she found Eärendil, she would be safe; she would wake up. She just needed to—

“Elwing!” The kinslayer, coated in blood, yelled again. In a haunting moment of lucidity, she could see the sickness in her assailant’s eyes, she could see that he really, truly meant that he didn’t want to hurt her. She could see exactly why he wouldn’t hesitate to run her through with a sword anyway. They were out of control, they had no ability for peace. There was no bargaining with a Fëanorian.

She could swim. Better than anyone. The distance wasn’t so far, and the Maiar liked her, they’d keep her safe and they’d tell her where to go. She took another step back. She wouldn’t turn away, she needed to see him. 

“We have your sons!” He shouted over the wind. Her whole body locked in place.

“That’s not possible.” She breathed, clutching at the Nauglamir around her neck, ignoring the bite of the metal as the skin of her fingers caught between the joints. “They’re safe.”

She’d left them with their nurse, she recalled, and told her to run and take them as far away as possible. That was how she had survived. She’d ran as far away as possible. She’d ran. She could still run, back through the open window, away from all this, to Eärendil. She had to get to Eärendil. They could come back with help, just like they planned.

She should’ve gone with him in the first place. Should’ve agreed when he said they didn’t have to be split up. She’d thought it wasn’t the right place for a child to grow up, but surely here was worse.

Besides, even if the Fëanorian was telling the truth, he wouldn’t hurt them, would he? They were clever boys. Clever boys who knew how to run and hide and smile and charm and manipulate everyone around them into giving them exactly what they wanted. 

_I’m going to save the world,_ Eärendil had said. She didn’t doubt it. He would succeed, and the world would be saved; no one would have to die in a war against Morgoth again. The horrors would all be over. Except not _her_ horrors. Her horrors grew from the flaws in the hearts and minds of people. _Her_ horrors weren’t the fault of Morgoth and his love of domination and destruction. Her horrors sprung up from a man holding out a shaking hand, eyes wide and desperate. 

She took another step back, this time with purpose. Her fingertips grazed the side of the window frame as she clung to it. She closed her eyes. All she had to do was jump. She could come back for the twins later, she told herself, it would all be okay. She shut her eyes and pushed herself away from the window, from solid ground, from danger.

* * *

The docks, the house and that storage cupboard. 

Those were the parts of Sirion he remembered, and even then those memories were more about his mother than the locations themselves. The docks were a backdrop to her laughter as she would talk to them about their father, offering them fried treats if they behaved themselves properly, taking them down to the water and teaching them to swim, to endure the crystal-cool temperatures in the earlier months. 

Then there was the house, with its thick carpets on wooden floors, and tiles of cool stone in the hall. Lots of space to run, as long as they dodged around their mother’s advisors—advisors who, for the most part, seemed to see them more as inconveniences than princes. And Elwing would catch them when they seemed like they were about to slip, and sweep them up into her arms to take them somewhere safer, where they couldn’t hit their heads so badly if they fell. 

Then that dark cupboard where they’d been locked, that they’d bloodied their fingers on the splinters trying to open so that they could breathe clean air before they were killed; the mad dash outside, running as fast as a child’s legs could, as far away as possible. The strange feeling of absence when they snuck back through the empty house, looking for a mother that was no longer there.

Elrond held out a hand, and the petrel perched against his forearm. During the War, he’d found himself in a tavern with his father, shortly before it all came to an end, listening to a conversation between a group of Vanyar and a few ex-Doriathrim. Somehow it had come up that Elwing was safe but worried, and had become a complete and utter curiosity for her strange, newfound abilities. Elrond had edged as close as he could and clung onto every word. He’d tried to send a message for her via seagull that evening. Just a simple  _ I’m safe,  _ so that she wouldn’t have to worry about him any longer. He never found out if she received it, but occasionally he would catch a glimpse of a bird completely uncharacteristic for the climate he was in, or one that had flown miles inland to come and tap at his window. He would speak to them when they came. 

She liked to send the petrels most, but occasionally, when she really wanted to keep his spirits up, she’d send a tropicbird with their streaming tail-feathers, or a puffin, with their bright beak. She never came personally, though—he was certain he’d be able to tell if she had.

The petrel nipped at his fingers affectionately; he offered the bird a small fish, for going to all that trouble to find him. He’d learned quickly that if he treated them well, they’d come more often, and he’d be able to speak to his mother more. Not that she could ever reply, but it was still  _ something.  _

“Tell her that Pengolodh is asking about her. I told him everything I could remember, I’m sorry, I didn’t know how to refuse.”

The petrel nudged at his hand again. He didn’t speak bird—not in the same way that his mother apparently did—but it seemed almost as if they were saying  _ don’t worry, it’s okay. She could never be angry.  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So it took a little longer than I would've liked to get this one done, and the next chapter will take longer still, but I feel like I'm fairly proud with what I ended up with. I've told Elwing's side of the story, so now I want to tell Maglor's, but I'm also going to be mindful of the fact that there's more to cover with Maglor, so there probably won't be as much focus on the kinslaying. 
> 
> If you liked this chapter, please comment down below! Letting writer's know what parts you like informs them of what to keep doing in future works!


	3. A Kidnapper

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Pengolodh writes to ask about what happened after he was taken by the Feanorians, it awakens a surge of memories within Elrond. Maglor gets used to taking care of the children that he stole.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want more in-depth of how they ended up with Maglor, check out my other fic here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18107774

Pengolodh really had written again, just as he had promised

Since the subject matter was Maglor, he’d also written entirely using euphemisms and epithets; if Elrond had to read the words ‘ _ the Kinslayer’  _ or  _ ‘the Fëanorian’  _ again, his brain would turn to mush. Essentially, he was being asked, on a scale of one-to-ten, how much he hated Maglor Fëanorion. It was a fair question to ask; Maglor had driven his mother away from him, killed his grandmother, murdered his kin over the sea and kidnapped him. By all accounts, he was little more than a monster with a pretty voice, who could tempt you to your doom by humming a single note. He was the kind of person parents told their children scary stories about.  _ Don’t take things that aren’t yours, or the Kinslayer will kill you. Don’t play with fire, or the Fëanorion will set you alight. Don’t wander off into the sea, or the Siren will drown you.  _

The problem was that Elrond didn’t hate him. 

Whatever Maglor had done, he had also cleaned the blood from their hands when he found them, smoothed antiseptic into their cuts, fed them and kept them warm. Then he had found them somewhere soft to sleep, taught them to write and sing and fight. Maglor had been the one to teach them all of the fancy Eldarin ways to put up their hair, and he had been the one to hug them against his chest when they were cold, or tired, or sad; he had let them sit in his lap as he composed, watching the way his hands flew across the strings of a harp or lyre. 

It had been easy to love him, but it wasn’t comfortable. 

He tried not to blame himself for loving the Kinslayer, told himself he had only been a child in need of someone to take care of him, that he could’ve loved  _ anyone  _ who had simply been there, but that wasn’t true. No one would’ve been quite the same: no one as gentle, no one who understood what they had gone through in the same way, no one as desperate to have something to love.

What he wrote back to Pengolodh was:

_ He treated us well. We weren’t unhappy. _

And then, because it felt like something that needed to be said:

_ Maglor was never unkind; he cared for us deeply. We were important to him.  _

Pengolodh was smart enough to read between the lines, and wrote back quickly, with a single question.

_ He was as a father to you? _

_ Yes. _

* * *

Some days he would wonder why they had chosen to come with him.  _ I want to buy your protection.  _ Protection, the protection of the man who had killed all of their maternal kin, who had driven their mother to surrender herself to the tides of the ocean and all of its whims. Those boys—he thought—were either very stupid, or incredibly smart. Having known them for the months that he had, he didn’t think it was the former. 

Elerondo—Elrond—the gentler twin (he had found several names for him over the course of their journey) looked up at him from across the kitchen table, with wide, grey-green eyes. Eyes like stone and moss and lichen, eyes like the walls of a sea cave. 

He had never been one for sailing; the one time Finrod had persuaded him to come out in his little boat, they’d crashed into a cave-wall covered in mussels. Finrod had apologised and moved on, which was all fine and well, but Maglor—Maglor could  _ hear  _ them. He could hear their split-second moment of shock and pain. Maglor heard the cries of the spirit. However, that did not mean he could read minds—they were their own beast—though sometimes he wished he could see into the child’s. 

He really did look like Lúthien—from what he’d heard of her, at least—with the hair, dark as the night sky, and the skin so white and so smooth that it nearly glowed. But Maglor had never met Lúthien; he saw her likeness in them through someone else. 

What a cruel game for fate to play. 

There was an ache of sorts that plagued him when he looked at Elrond. A yearning, the sensation of a rope or a soft ribbon of silk tied tight around his sternum, that tugged at him. Just a little, just gently. Sometimes it pulled hard though, and he would find himself grasping onto the nearest solid surface to keep his balance. He danced around it most of the time, trying not to address the feeling, the implications of what it meant, the way that it reminded him of that most tender of hurts, but some nights he would sit alone with his violin (the harp had quickly become too tiresome to maintain and too heavy to carry) under the stars, and he would play the only songs he knew of that he hadn’t written himself. 

Then the ache would intensify. It never hurt him, but it would grow and bloom into saplings and flowers and the sound of laughter; gentle breezes from windows left open just a crack, the lightest brush of fingertips and ‘ _ I wish you were here _ ’s. 

_ It’d only be fair,  _ he thought,  _ but, then again, this world has never been fair.  _

“Maglor?”

“Yes?” He forced his expression into what he hoped was a gentle smile. 

“You said you’d explain the rings.” Elrond held his up—the silver, set with all the tiny gems in a very traditional and very  _ not  _ Noldorin design. Maglor tensed. It really, really didn’t help that Elrond had his wedding ring, almost as if he really were his son, and not just some child he’d stolen because the guilt of not doing so would’ve been too much. Of course, now he regretted that, too. So many regrets, all piling up on top of each other. 

“I never said any such thing.”

“You did!” He protested. “You said!”

Maybe at some point, some point in a different life, a better world, long gone and left to blow away on the breeze, he would’ve laughed. Maybe he would’ve teased him for being nosy, ruffled his perfect straight hair. _ In a better world _ , he thought, but the simple childishness of the complaint brought a smile to his lips anyway. A real one, this time. “How about I tell you if you promise to eat all your vegetables.”

Elrond quieted down fast enough. 

When he was little and his mother had used that trick on him, he’d always assumed it was what it seemed on the surface. Now he was older, he knew better; that was what you said when you wanted your child to give you a moment of peace. 

_ No.  _

Not his child. He couldn’t allow himself to think that way. Elrond wasn’t his son, and never would be, no matter how much he longed for it.

He’d given him all three of the rings so that he could use them to pay for someone to look after him and Elros, but they, being the annoyingly curious children that they were, wouldn’t leave him alone until he explained  _ why  _ there were three. He found himself reaching to twist the one he’d kept—the white-gold—around his finger. The ache that came with that one was a different ache; one of warm hugs and  _ ‘welcome home, we missed you’ _ s. Perhaps even more unattainable than its counterpart. 

In a better world, he would never have been given that ring in the first place. 

_ Do you think Maglor misses his mother, too?  _ He had overheard Elrond whisper to his brother one night. It was long past their bedtime, but they had been known to stay up well into the small hours anyway, so he’d thought it a good idea to check on them. It wasn’t as if he was getting any sleep. He’d never punish them if they  _ were  _ awake; being who they were, and he who he was, he treated them with as much gentleness as he possibly could. No, instead he would knock softly, and tuck them in again to tell them more stories, then to sing to them until lullabies of stars and lazy afternoons lulled them into peaceful slumber. 

But that night he had just stood at their door and listened.  _ Of course I miss my mother,  _ he thought,  _ I miss her more than anything in the world.  _ And then, in a moment of icy realisation,  _ and I miss knowing that she’s proud of me.  _

“Would you like to help me make dinner?” He set down his sheet music. “Our brothers should be back soon enough, and I’m sure Elros will have worked up an appetite.” He was careful to leave out the fact that he and Maedhros rarely had the energy or desire to eat—the twins didn’t need to know that. 

“I don’t like cooking,” Elrond pouted.

“Then you should’ve gone out with the others.”

“I don’t like hunting either.”

Maglor sighed. This, at least, was familiar ground. “Would you like to watch, then, while I cook?”

Elrond frowned, but gave in. Oh, the poor line of Lúthien, always the victims. How had they painted Daeron, again? Either he was her anxious, protective younger brother (accurate) or they erased the fact the two of them had been related entirely, and claimed that he had loved her (ridiculous, had they even  _ met  _ him?) So many times Maglor had been tempted to tell them exactly why that wasn’t possible, so many times he had held his tongue for fear that Thingol would have him skinned if he spoke up. And his brothers? Scheming and manipulative assholes (also accurate), who would stop at nothing to kill her son (again, accurate—to be fair, Celegorm and Curufin had done enough to make themselves look bad.) Then Elwing, forced to leap to her death by him and his brother, the Oath-crazed maniacs. 

And now Elrond, for whom it was really  _ such torment  _ to be taught to cook. 

Maglor smiled. Despite everything, he had a warm fondness for the boy. Kind and gentle; soft-spoken and careful not to harm the small creatures; always the one to insist that Maglor release the spider outside instead of killing it, ordering him around like a very pleasant, very generous prince instructing a faithful servant. 

_ Oh, Daeron, you would love him,  _ he thought, as Elrond hopped down from his chair and followed him.  _ He and his brother are everything you imagined.  _

* * *

Elrond turned the wedding-ring in his hands. The second of the mysterious three rings that Maglor wore, and had tried to give them before they decided to come with him. It was a gorgeous thing—pure silver, with tiny jade leaves, speckled in diamonds; it was designed to look like a very expensive miniscule vine twisted around five times. When Maglor had taken back the single ring, he’d expected it to be this one, yet it wasn’t. Elros had ended up with the simple, gold band, and Maglor had kept the silver (actually white-gold, he later learnt).

He’d told them about the gold first.

It was a simple story, told only a few months after they had used the rings to buy his protection, as they sat around the fireplace and he strummed absentmindedly at a lute. Elros had been lying on his back on the carpet, staring at it as it reflected the firelight.

_ “That was my wife’s, originally,”  _ Maglor had said, surprising them. Elros had hopped back up and scrambled right over to sit at his feet and listen.  _ “We were married young. She was a tailor for my grand—pardon— _ step- _ grandmother and was commissioned to make robes for me as an act of goodwill.” _

_ “How did you fall in love?”  _ Elros had asked. He wouldn’t forget Maglor’s expression when he asked that—some strange mix of sweetness and sadness and anger.

_ “We didn’t,”  _ he’d said, after a heavy pause.  _ “She was easy to talk to, like a song you pick up the first time you hear it, and we became good friends. We were married a year later, simply because I got on better with her than anyone else.” _

_ “You couldn’t stay friends?” _

_ “We didn’t think so.”  _ Then Maglor had told them about how wonderful she was, and how he’d never met someone so bright— _ Calima,  _ her name had been—and unconditionally friendly, even when she was afraid.  _ “We split up because she fell in love with my lieutenant. It was a relief.” _

The second ring was a deeper secret, a darker one. 

Elros had given up badgering him about it after a year and a half. Elrond, however, had a personal investment in whatever its story was. Whenever they were alone, he would make a point of asking, just to see if he would finally give in. Elrond grew up waiting for his answer, but when he got it, he almost wished he hadn’t.

The memories pained his father, his brow had been furrowed the entire time he spoke. It was from his husband, he said, who he hadn’t seen in over a century, and who he really didn’t want to talk about. 

_ “Who was he?”  _ Elrond had asked, childishly, insensitively. 

_ “No one of importance. Another musician—he played the most beautiful tunes you ever heard, like sound made liquid, able to tell stories and paint pictures of wonderful things; castles, mountains, dreams—all just with a few notes. He had the most beautiful hands, and a wonderful voice, all clean and strong, able to sing notes any normal person could only dream of. When we were apart, we’d write to each other; his words were always gorgeous, so terribly indulgent in the way he used language—”  _ Maglor stopped.  _ “He left a long time ago.” _ It sounded as if that was more for his benefit than Elrond’s. 

He’d thought such a person must be the most wonderful in the world.

He didn’t anymore. Maglor spoke about his husband the same way his mother had spoken about Eärendil. 

He slipped it back onto its chain; once he had thought that he’d gotten the better heirloom, too. Now it just felt like an unfathomable weight; the full extent of his father’s heartache hanging around his neck for eternity.

The final ring. The white-gold. It had been Maglor’s mother’s. His grandmother’s, if he let himself indulge in that for a moment. Apparently she had thought regular gold clashed too badly with her hair. 

He only found that out in the weeks before they were separated for the last time. His father had taken him aside and told him that the last time he saw her, she handed him her wedding ring and told him to look after it, that the day he returned and gave it back to her would be the day she took his father back. 

At the time, Maglor said, he hadn’t understood why he, of all his brothers, had been entrusted it. He didn’t have to say aloud why he was no longer confused; it hung in the air next to all the ghosts of his lost kin. Elrond understood why he couldn’t have had that ring instead; it was too important that it stay with Maglor, if he was going to keep one at all.

That had also been the same conversation as when Maglor told him that he had given up on any idea of redemption or return until they decided to come with him. 

_ “I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive my father enough to return it, though,”  _ he had sighed. 

And Elrond had thought for a moment before speaking.  _ “I think you will. I can forgive mine.” _

* * *

Maglor watched closely as Elrond felt his way around the lyre, plucking at the strings, figuring out the best way to hold it. He set it down in his lap, and looked up at him with a frown on his face. “Dad, I’m really not sure what I’m doing.”

When had he started calling him that? A while ago, years now. At first Maglor had scolded him, told him that he wasn’t his father and that it wouldn’t do for him to start thinking that way. But the twins had always had their way, and if they insisted that he was their father, then he was their father. He’d be lying if he said that he didn’t think of them as sons, anyhow. 

He sighed, and sank to his knees before where Elrond sat, positioning the instrument in his hands. He plucked out a few notes to demonstrate: “See? Simple.”

“Right.” Elrond didn’t sound as if he believed him.

He had already proven himself quite accomplished at singing (much to Maedhros’ dismay and inconvenience—songs of power hurt his head) and Elros had an affinity for anything that could potentially be used to make a crashing sound (also to Maedhros’ dismay.) “Just give it a try.” In Maglor’s expert (and it was) opinion, Elrond seemed like the type of person suited to string instruments, like himself. Lyres and harps, and violins and cellos, lutes and zithers. He took a strange sort of pride in that. 

Elrond sighed, and played a few notes, mimicking a tune that Maglor had hummed to soothe their fears when anxiety rose within them. It was simple; a mere four notes, but its progression was intentionally reminiscent of crashing waves against a soft, sandy beach. When he’d come up with the tune, he’d been sitting at the shore in Alqualondë (before the Oath, of course, there was no time after) with baby Caranthir in his lap, wriggling and whining and very much getting in the way of his composing. The notes had originally meant to be the start of a song, but when he played them, he found that little Moryo had quieted down to listen, eyes wide, before eventually settling into a peaceful sleep in the crook of his arm. 

It had been the first time he realised that he could not only play, but  _ create _ songs of power. 

“See? That’s it; you’ve got it.” In truth, the instrument really wasn’t quite right for the tune, but Maglor still felt his shoulders ease as he listened to his son play. 

A memory of Daeron showing him around the instrument surfaced from somewhere deep in his mind. Though he’d always been one for woodwinds, he’d said, he had a soft spot for it. He liked the clean, simplicity of the music that it created; it let him build upon its foundation. He decided not to tell Elrond that; he wasn’t stupid, and he could tell that Elrond’s feelings towards his lover had soured with time—not that he could blame him. The world looked different to a boy than to a man. 

Of course, the irony came in that the resemblance was almost too painful to bear sometimes, too much of a reminder of the future that he had once hoped to have, the cruel twist that had been applied to it. 

“Are you sure that sounded alright?”

Maglor snapped back to reality. “Yes, that was wonderful.” He reached out and squeezed his son’s shoulder. “I’m so proud of you.”

Elrond didn’t look convinced. “Why won’t you let me train with Elros?”

“I don’t want you hurting each other,” he answered, simply. He felt at the scar on the inside of his lip with his tongue—from his teeth, technically, when a blow from Celegorm had hit him in the mouth. Back before Maedhros had been returned to them. 

Elrond opened his mouth to speak. He held up a hand. “I know, I know; you’ll be careful, you’ll be soft on each other. The thing is; when you do that, you aren’t really training, while using your  _ full  _ abilities is dangerous. You don’t yet have the same knowledge to match your technique and intensity to help better your opponent.”

“And you can’t teach me because?”

Maglor swallowed the nausea at the back of his throat. “It’s just a bad day for that.” He wouldn’t trouble the child with all of the intricacies of what he and his brother had dubbed ‘oathsickness.’ The disease left him weak, with sore joints and an upset stomach, blood in his throat and memories slipping away from his mind as if it were a sieve. Some days it was better, some days it was worse, some days he wouldn't be able to leave his bed. He thanked the Valar that so far he and Maedhros had never suffered an episode at the same time. 

Elrond set the instrument down. “I just don’t think this is for me.”

“Watch.” Maglor took it and, ignoring the ache in his knuckles, began to play. It was one of the simpler songs, nothing world bending or even really remotely mystical, but it had been designed to explore the instrument, to bring it to its highest peaks and its lowest valleys, to try out how music sounded on it. The song was sweet and clear and brought to mind the taste of peaches and mangoes, sweet fruits that left luscious juices on your tongue and lips. It was the sun on a summer day as you lay in the dappled shade beneath a tree with a book; it was looking up into the sky and imagining the leaves were an ocean above you, that you could ever look down on the world from above in such a way. The final notes rang out. “See?”

“I can’t play like you, dad. You could make anything sound good.”

He snorted. “I’m fairly sure your uncle would beg to differ.” He stood up and handed the instrument back. “You’ll be amazing someday. Come here.”

Elrond stood and succumbed to the embrace. He was still so small. He wasn’t grown yet, of course, and someday he’d probably be a tall and noble Descendant of Lúthien, just like he was meant to be—but for now he was a child in his father’s arms. Maglor squeezed him close, then kissed him on the side of the head. Still so dependant, too. This war was no place for a child, he thought. And yet here was the war, and there were his children. “Go train with your brother. Just so long as you promise not to practice  _ on  _ each other.”

Elrond pulled back, looking up at him in wide-eyed surprise.

“You’re right, and we’re at war. If you don’t feel passion for the instrument you’ll never be able to play songs of power on it. I’d rather you have a tangible way to defend yourself.”

Elrond nodded, still dazed. “Thank you.” He turned to rush outside, before stopping and pressing a quick kiss to his cheek. “I love you.”

“Shoo, go.” Maglor waved him away. He sat down on the ground and pulled the lyre into his lap; he traced his fingers over the carvings in the wood. Fate really was cruel. Cruel, indeed.

* * *

Elrond shut his eyes.

The sensation of the autumn sun against his skin was a luxury that warmed him both from inside and out, easing the cold grief out of his bones, taking it away somewhere else. Somewhere it wouldn’t bother him any longer. 

Every time he found himself at the shore he would stand there to listen, to see if he could hear his father’s voice over the sound of the waves, the howling of the wind. Sometimes he wondered if those  _ were  _ his father’s voice. It had been so long since they had last seen each other. 

His hand found the ring on its chain again, and pulled it free from beneath his shirt. It really was gorgeous, and it reflected the light in tiny pools of colour over his hands in the evening sun. If he held it up like a beacon, could it call his father home? If he threw it into the sea, would his father care? But he couldn’t because, no matter who had designed it, it had still  _ belonged  _ to Maglor, and it was the only heirloom he had. 

Elrond had spent a lot of time thinking about what he was going to say if he ever came across Daeron—his father’s very secret husband, who he would never have named in a thousand years (overdramatic, but Elrond hadn’t had any trouble figuring it out for himself)—but he had never rehearsed what he would say to Maglor himself. Or, no, he had, but he’d never quite found the perfect speech. He’d never found the right way to express all of the anger and the grief and the love and joy and gratitude. He’d never be able to sum up his feelings towards his kidnapper in words, he knew that much.

And yet. 

He still found himself tracing those old steps back down to the beach to watch the waves roll in as he waited. Maybe he wouldn’t say anything. Maybe he’d just list all of the things he should’ve said as a child. Or even just all of the things he should’ve said more. Maybe he’d yell and blame and sob. Maybe he’d punch him. 

In the end, it didn’t matter. Maglor wasn’t coming back. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave a comment to let me know what you enjoyed! It always helps with knowing what to include in future chapters and where to focus my writing, as well as gives me the motivation to continue.


	4. A Kinslayer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elrond decides to coerce Gil-galad into opening up about his feelings regarding Maedhros, but ends up instead telling him things about his childhood. Maedhros tries to maintain his connection to the reality of his situation through the haze of the damage to his Fea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay, I was taking part in the Reading Rush, so I didn't get any writing done. Hopefully this will suffice!!

Sometimes, when he and Ereinion found themselves in one of the few pockets of the day where they could be alone, the subject of Maedhros would stand between them, looming just on the edges of their conversation in words half-spoken and meaningful glances around to see if anyone was listening. They never had to actually say who Maedhros was to them—not when they had their code—which turned out to be a relief (and a blessing, considering all of the court gossip.) But the psychotherapist, whom he had grudgingly begun to respect, had taught him a few things about grief, and keeping all memories on the outskirts of reminiscence wasn’t exactly healthy.

“Ereinion,” he said, as they looked out over the city lights in the early twilight, little specks of warmth in a sea of blue. 

“Elrond.”

“Maedhros.”

“Oh.”

“Oh.” Elrond echoed, straightening up. “We haven’t been down to the meadow in a while. I hear the flowers smell sweeter in the evening air.”

Ereinion met his eyes with an exhausted resignation. It was one of his more common looks and Elrond wondered if elves could get wrinkles simply from making the same face all of the time. Elros had managed to develop smile lines at twenty-eight, so he was fairly sure expression wasn’t an exclusively human thing. Yet, Ereinion’s face stayed smooth and perfect as any of the firstborn. 

They slipped out in silence, cloaked like any of the common folk and theoretically completely inconspicuous, if not for the fact that neither of them had been born with the type of face that easily blended into crowds. Still, it was a lazy evening and most people were too mellowed out to bother with cloaked figures slipping down back alleys and out into the greenbelt.

The meadow was an unruly place, filled to bursting with wildflowers—avoided because its soils never seemed to support anything else, and anyone who went there swore that they could hear snakes hissing among the grasses. The snakes, of course, where a simple illusion Elrond had conjured up several years prior. Selfish, yes, but if Ereinion never allowed himself that smallest indulgence, then Elrond would arrange it for him. 

They sat down among the flowers, the sky spreading out above them in its infinite darkness, Varda’s stars tiny jewels of light, and Eärendil among them. Elrond ignored him.

“So, Maedhros,” said Ereinion. He stared down at his hands. 

“It’s not healthy to shove him away under a floorboard, you know.”

“I figured we’d end up having to talk about this, I just—I...I don’t know. I don’t know, Elrond, I don’t think I  _ can.”  _

“Then I’ll talk.”

* * *

Maedhros shuddered as the final sword fell to the earth with a dull thud, its wielder not far behind. The smell of it—the stench of thick blood on a summer’s day—should’ve made him sick. He did not feel sick. 

For a moment, he let himself breathe. Just breathe. Not think about what had happened and not think about anything at all. Thinking was what would kill him someday, he knew that much. If he got too much in his head, if he let his thoughts get too loud, he was weak. Weakened. Struck. 

So, deep breaths, and try not to think. 

“Maedhros?”

He turned and knelt before the boys, all too aware of his own newly bloodied state. Maedhros made an attempt to soften his expression, to imitate that reassuring smile that so many other members of his family had been so adept at wearing. “All safe now.”

The twins exchanged a glance. They were so small, looked so weak and fragile with spindly limbs and wide eyes and trembling hands. Maedhros decided not to press them: if they would not be comforted, then they would not be comforted; it was as simple as that. He hadn’t the same skills as Maglor, after all. 

Maglor, Maglor.

Maglor. Bedridden, eyes wide and tired, hair a mess and hands shaking, their instrument discarded in the corner of the room as he stared off into the middle-distance. He would come back. He always did. But he wouldn’t remember a moment of it, as was typical for a bout of that sickness. His brother was lucky, really, that in his days he remembered more than he forgot. Maedhros forgot more than he remembered. 

Breathe. 

“We’ll be home soon.”

Taking the twins out had been a bad idea, Maedhros thought, but perhaps leaving them to see Maglor like that would've somehow been worse. Perhaps.

Breathe.

He stood up, and sheathed his sword. He offered them his hand. “Come on.” They wavered for a moment (they always did and, really, could he blame them?) “I won’t hurt you.”

“We know.” One of them said. Elrond, he thought, but he couldn’t always tell. That filled him with a sense of guilt, or mourning, or something indescribable. Once, hundreds—thousands—of years ago, he’d been able to tell his own brothers apart with a degree of ease that left those around him impressed and in awe. He was out of practice. He would probably never be  _ in  _ practice ever again. 

Elrond (he thought) took his hand. Yes, it would be him; he was usually the peacemaker, and Elros always preferred Maglor. Or preferred Maglor most of the time. Or he couldn’t remember, and maybe these categories were completely arbitrary and he was wrong about everything. Were there even two of them, or was he just seeing double? 

Maglor had always spoken about them in plural, hadn’t he? Was Maglor just as unstuck from reality as him? Was Maedhros misremembering?

Breathe. 

He could find out, couldn’t he? There would be a way, simple as addressing one of them by name. “Elros,” he said, then scrambled to find the second part of the sentence, “keep an eye out for any others.”

The second twin—the one that he presumed was not Elrond—nodded. 

“We’ll be home soon,” he found himself repeating again. It wasn’t true. Not for him; he who could never truly return home. Not for the twins, either, who were simply hostages in the old building that they had found. It was a good place to live, though. High up on a hill, with a view over all the countryside around it. A decent fortress, and yet completely empty and half-ruined. He still hadn’t found out why it was empty, and that unease haunted him day and night.

What was waiting just over the horizon to attack them? What horrible ailment lived within the pipes? What disease dwelt between the rushes. 

Breathe.

He had to breathe. 

* * *

“He mistook me for you once,” Elrond said. It seemed like as good a way to start as any and it was probably better to get the heavier things out of the way first. Ereinion stared at him.

“Really? That really happened?” 

The two of them looked about as different as a campfire and waterfall; Ereinion all dark and warm and Elrond, white as a lily and just as cool. “He was really sick.”

“I gathered.” Ereinion wrapped his arms around himself. 

“I don’t think he had the best grasp on reality at the time; it was as if the reality he thought that he inhabited was so much worse than the one he actually did that he couldn’t reconcile the differences, and was left drowning in the space in-between.

“It happened when we were alone—for some reason Maglor had taken my brother somewhere else, probably to talk to him about his ‘reckless behaviour’—and I asked him to tell me about Aman. He was a wonderful storyteller, better than Maglor, because he didn’t hide anything. He told me about all of the messy and the stupid things his brothers and cousins did when they were younger and I just assumed it was a slip of the tongue when he referred to Fingon as my father.”

Ereinion shut his eyes and nodded. 

“But then he called me Ereinion and lost track of the story, like he’d only just realised where he was.”

“Right.”

“He used to confuse me with Celebrimbor, too, and Elros with one of his younger brothers. He mistook both of us for our uncles most, but I think that was guilt more than anything else. It was strange, though; he never mixed up Maglor with anyone.” Elrond paused. Ereinion stared at the ground. “I think he missed you a lot, is what I’m saying.”

“Yeah, well, he could’ve done something about it.”

Elrond waited. 

“Do you know how angry I was with him? It’s almost like I went through phases of wanting nothing more than to go home, and then fantasising about how I’d get back at him for not taking me there, and then just wanting to go home again.”

“That’s—I mean—” Elrond paused. He had to word what he wanted to say just right. “I think it was the same for him. He wanted to go home, but he was angry at himself, except with him the anger always won.”

“Did he ever consider he was hurting me, too?”

Elrond didn’t answer.

Ereinion sighed. “I’m not being fair. It just hurt a lot when I was younger and I resented you, at first, because you got to have him around, and I didn’t, which is a ridiculous thing for a grown adult to be upset at a child over.”

“I always thought that, for him, we were easier to face because nothing could ever disappoint us.”

“You’re probably right. It’s that question about whether it’s possible to love someone so much that you can never show them the rougher side of yourself. To love someone into estrangement, almost.”

“I’m beginning to think that you aren’t stealing these things from Cirdan, and you’re actually just wise. It’s good that I don’t love you too much to say that.”

Ereinion snorted and lay back against the ground. “I should make a toast to not being loved fully by my younger cousin. Maybe at your wedding: ‘I pray that you don’t love your spouse  _ too  _ much.’” Elrond nudged him in the arm. 

“Shut up.”

“You can’t tell the High King to shut up, Elrond, I could have you beheaded.”

“Actually, since you’re apparently Orodreth’s now, I have the better claim. Order my beheading and I’ll usurp you.”

“I could do with a break.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading! Please leave a comment if you enjoyed this and so I can get some pointers on where to put my focus next!


	5. A cousin, a Brother, a Friend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elrond thinks about his friendship with the High King of the Noldor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so this might be one of the few times I've written this style of fic where the character in question is still living at the time of writing (the only other times were with Cirdan and Maglor in the Gil fic) so it may seem a little odd, but I hope it's okay!! More context here is of course: the Gil fic. This is set in the same timeline, so Gil-galad is a weird three-quarter elf (probably, no one knows--also yes, I made Asya into a half-elf since we last spoke. You can ask why, but you might not like the answer) who considers his real parents to be Fingon (primarily) and Maedhros (secondarily.) Anyway, now that that's out of the way, this should make some semblance of sense.
> 
> Also, writing discord: https://discord.gg/BCUPDan

The years waxed and waned, friends came and went and were lost and found, but Ereinion was constant and unchanging, the mystery never solved and the connection never broken. A part of it made Elrond uneasy; every person that he had ever loved had, at some point, in one way or another left him. His father to save the world, his mother to flee certain death, his dad to chase the Silmarils and his brother mortality; it was only a matter of time before he could see Ereinion taking his exit, too. Just because it hadn’t happened yet, didn’t mean that it never would. He had already accepted that to care for someone was to accept the inevitability of loss. 

He sketched out a rough architectural blueprint of a building on the back of a sheet of discarded parchment. The more he worked, the more he noticed it beginning to resemble the house on the hill, with its strange layout and round windows. 

“You know, Elrond, you’re like a third cousin once removed to me.” Elrond looked up. Ereinion shifted the papers in his hands to hide his grin. 

“So, you calculated it.”

“Yes.” He sat up and handed the genealogy over. “I thought that I might as well—just for record-keeping’s sake.”

“You could just ask Erestor, or one of the others.” He sensed Ereinion’s excuse before he even voiced it. “Especially if you’re going by Orodreth. We might as well not even be related.”

“Okay, and if I go by Fingon, then you’re what? My first cousin twice removed? It’s far less humourous.”

“Or you can be my cousin.”

“Or my…” he trailed off and his eyes flit down to the chart he’d drawn out in front of himself. “Second cousin.” He made a face. “That’s underwhelming; I was hoping for something wordier.”

Elrond sighed, then shifted his attention to the shelves that sat behind them, and the golden-clasped boxes upon them.  _ Paper trails,  _ he called them, the signatures of the lives of their various family members (and sometimes simply the various heroes that had surrounded them.) After the Nirnaeth Arnoediad so many of their homes had fallen that the only letters that they’d been able to recover had been things scavenged from Nargothrond by the Doriathrim, and then from Doriath and Sirion in turn. Elrond had hoped that upon joining Ereinion he would find more of his dad’s various works and writings; he had not expected that the records kept in their meagre study would be more than Ereinion’s entire collection. 

Maglor’s life fit into three of those boxes and six journals, filled in erratically and only when he was lacking in inspiration. Elrond often wondered if he should take it as an insult or a compliment that at least one of those six was filled entirely with memories from Maglor’s experience raising him and his brother. 

Maedhros had one box. Fingon had two, if only because the letters from him were kept by Maedhros. The rest of the sons of Fëanor shared one, two thirds of which were taken up by Caranthir and Curufin respectively. 

Elrond stood up and slid the sixth journal from the shelf, then flipped to a random page; he stared for a second, surprised to find his own eight-year-old scrawl looking back at him. “I forgot that he used to let me write in these, too.”

“Oh?” Ereinion turned in his seat and craned his neck to look. “Care to read aloud?”

“I’d prefer not to…” He skimmed over what he had written. “But it  _ does  _ concern you, so I suppose I legally have to. Full disclosure and all that.”

“Of course.”

“I’ll warn you, my younger self is not nearly as eloquent as I am.” Elrond cleared his throat. “ _ I asked Maedhros who Ereinion was. He said that it was complicated and that he didn’t really know, but that he was my cousin and that he would be really proud of me if he knew me, and he’d be so happy to have someone else to play with and that, if I wanted, I could help write a letter to him. I said that I did, but then H—”  _ he paused, noting where his younger self had scribbled out his brother’s birth name— “ _ Elros said that he found something cool outside, so I went to go and look and— _ that’s it for the interesting part.”

“But, it was just  _ getting  _ interesting.”

“He only found a toad. I’d already discovered it three days before him.”

Ereinion’s voice softened. “Did you ever write that letter?”

“One of us would have it, if we did.” He deflated a little. Elrond set the journal back on the shelf, then patted him on the shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

* * *

The smoke of the ruins stung his eyes and the back of his throat as he walked through the city. Civilisation gone, torn down in a mere few hours at the hand of—at the hands of the Fëanorians. Gil-galad wondered if Doriath had been like this, too, and Alqualondë. He had thought Nargothrond was bad. He had been naive. 

He stepped over another body. 

“Sir,” his general, Gladhal, nodded in the direction of the end of the street. A figure leant against the side of a building, hand clasped at their arm, holding back blood flow. “Do you think they’re Fëanorian?”

“They’re alive,” was the only answer that Gil-galad could provide them with. 

“They’re injured.” Gladhal frowned. They were right. Even from such a distance, Gil-galad could tell that each breath they took was laboured, and they seemed nigh incapable of standing without the support of the wall. 

“Hail!” Gil called out. They turned to look at him with the luminescent eyes of the Amanyar, the light piercing the shadows of where they rested. He tensed. That meant they could only really be Noldorin—whether that meant they were of Gondolin or of the Fëanorians was anyone’s guess. 

They edged closer, still leaning against the bricks for support, until they were in the light and he could make out their appearance a little better: a woman with dark hair, softly tanned skin, gold nails and a gold bar through the bridge of their nose. She seemed to be dressed in red and gold, too, but he couldn’t tell if that was just the blood. “Melguriel, of the House of the King,” she said.  _ Gondolindrim.  _ The tightness in his shoulders eased a little. 

“His Majesty High King Ereinion Gil-galad of the Noldor,” Gladhal announced him before he had the chance to stop them. 

“Your Majesty.” Melguriel bowed her head and winced at the pain. 

“Please don’t worry about that.” He glared at Gladhal. They didn’t seem to care. “Are you alright?”

“I will be fine.” She offered him a weak smile, then frowned and turned her eyes to the building at the side of the docks. “You must want news.”

“Elwing.”

Melguriel swallowed and nodded. “They cornered her in the tower.” 

Gil-galad braced himself for what would inevitably come next.

“She got away, but—”

“She got away?” 

Melguriel shook her head. “By jumping out of the window. We—we thought she would die, or at least be injured, but where she had fallen in, a white bird rose up with the Nauglamír around its neck. We think—”

“It was her.” Gil-galad breathed a sigh of relief. “So Elwing lives.”

Melguriel nodded. Gladhal, finally proving their worth, reached into their pack and offered her a vial of something for the pain. She downed it in one. 

“And of her sons?”

Melguriel frowned. “They were taken. I searched the house to find them after we realised they weren’t with the rest of the survivors, but they were gone. No bodies or any trace of a fight.”

_ They were taken.  _ The question was where? And by whom? Would they perish in the forest like their uncles? Were they hostages? Had they been taken for their own protection? He longed for the final possibility to be the real one, to be able to believe that his father—that Maedhros had still been able to do some good.

“We need to find them,” he said.

“The Fëanorians won’t ever let them go free,” Gladhal said. 

“Then we’ll find  _ them _ , too.”

* * *

Elrond was used to feeling uncomfortable around the people of Sirion. They reminded him of his mother and of Eärendil—sometimes unintentionally, sometimes not. It was worse when they meant it. Either they had some suspicion of his feelings regarding the subject and sought to remind him of what terrible people his kidnappers were, or they had no idea how he felt and simply thought that he would like to hear tales about his parents from before he was born. However, there were a select few that had become friends of Ereinion and who seemed, at least somewhat, to understand. 

Ereinion took pity on Elrond in unusual ways. Others shook their heads or told him that they were sorry for his losses, Ereinion found people Elrond could get along with. 

That was how he had come into knowing Melguriel, the chief counsellor to the king. Whether that king was Turgon or Ereinion himself didn’t matter; she had been both. And now she was retiring. 

She beamed at him from across the low table, sitting gently upon a heap of red pillows as she sipped her tea. The circlet of silver stars that she wore around her head—a gift from her spouse—reflected soft the light from the window. Elrond could imagine that his mother might’ve worn something similar at some point. 

“So, you’re sailing too?”

She nodded. “I spoke with Círdan and he seems to think we should be across long before the baby arrives.” Her hand drifted down to rest against her stomach. 

“Well,” Ereinion said, “I’m certainly happy for you, but I’m sore to lose both my best counsellor and my best general.” He shot a pointed look at Gladhal, who started and busied themself with something in the kitchen. Half of their house had been packed away into cases, or gifted to others in Lindon and their voices seemed to echo around the frame of the house. Elrond remembered the strange emptiness of his brother’s chambers in Armenelos after his passing and then wished that he hadn’t. 

Melguriel laughed. “I’m sure you can find better, and I’m not sure I’ll be up to it after enduring weeks of sleepless nights—really, it’s for your own safety.”

“Still, I’ll miss you.”

“As will I.” Elrond reached out and squeezed her hand. He had always liked Melguriel, she didn’t seem to care too much about anything other than the fact that he was safe and comparatively un-traumatised (or as much as anyone from the first age could be.) She squeezed his hand back. 

“We’ll write, if we can. I’ll tell you all about the baby.”

“We should leave you to pack,” Ereinion said. “Come to the palace tomorrow; I’ll arrange a goodbye dinner.”

“You don’t have to go to that trouble.”

“It’s the least I can do.”

Elrond nodded along as he stood. 

The walk back was peaceful in the evening light, with only a few people left out on the streets after the heat of the day, presumably all taking some time to rest. 

“You know how you’re my closest friend?” Ereinion stopped as they entered the palace grounds. 

“Yes.” He wasn’t sure what this would lead up to. 

“And you know how you are both, despite all of your japes and jests, fairly smart and a pretty decent leader?”

“Oh no.”

“I’m thinking maybe I could cut down on some costs if you wanted to fill Gladhal  _ and  _ Melguriel’s positions.”

“The real question is whether you needed them to be there in the first place.” Elrond raised his eyebrows. “You’re more savvy than most of your advisors and, as your closest friend, I  _ have  _ noticed.”

“It comes from being raised in politics.” Ereinion sighed dramatically. “When I was four I could already list the ten most important principles of leadership. I knew about political efficacy before I knew how babies were made.” The worrying part was that Elrond couldn’t tell if he was joking. “The point is,” Ereinion continued, “that I like having people to back me up, and I’d like one of those people to be you. Will you think about it?”

“I’ll think about it while I’m on retreat.” Elrond smiled. In truth, he had already made up his mind.

* * *

The twins sat quietly across the table from him as he shifted through the various bits and pieces that he’d retrieved from the house. Shopping lists, letters (unsent), diagrams and sheet music. There was also his father—Maedhros’ prosthetic hand, which one of the twins—Elrond, if he had to guess—fiddled with as they waited. Something about the gesture caused a surge of jealousy to rise in the back of his throat. “Could you put that down? It’s distracting.”

“Sorry.” The twin set it back against the wood with a dull thunk, and Gil-galad regretted his words. It had been hard enough to get used to having CÍrdan around to care about him, now he’d have to adjust to caring about these two princes—the rightful heirs to the throne, no less. He had never thought that he valued being king, but now that there was a very real chance the position could be taken from him, he was loathe to let go. 

Gil-galad sighed. He’d scoured through everything twice and there wasn’t much to be done in terms of searching now that they’d covered the entirety of the house—if he was looking for evidence of his father’s presence there, he wouldn’t find any more than he already had. Maedhros. Maedhros’ presence. Or was even that too familiar?  _ The presence of the sons of Fëanor.  _ But that sounded so alien. 

He dismissed the thought. “Come. I’ll get you somewhere safe.”

The twins exchanged a glance before they stood and made to follow him. Elrond picked up the prosthetic from the table. Gil-galad wished he would leave it behind.

He let his guards mount their horses first and watched as one of them helped Elros up onto theirs behind them. Someone cleared their throat. 

“This is for you.” Elrond pushed the prosthetic into Gil-galad’s hand, along with the note that Maedhros had left for him to find on the kitchen table. “He said to tell you that he loves you.”

Gil-galad shut his eyes and tried to keep his voice steady. If he had expected anything, it was not that. “Thank you, I appreciate it.” He had no idea if Maedhros had actually said that—if anything, the gesture told him more about the character of Elrond than the state of the Kinslayer ( _ Kinslayer,  _ that would be about right, wouldn’t it?) and he hated his father for that more than anyone else. “Really.”

Elrond nodded, then reached out and squeezed his shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said before he slipped away to join his brother.

If he could ignore the envy that threatened to seep into his words; if he could avoid the resentment, then maybe he could do well. Maybe he could care for the twins the same way that Círdan had cared for him and, after all, weren’t they almost like brothers?

Under his breath he made his vows.  _ I will be good to them, in ways few could ever be good to me.  _

* * *

Elrond’s first duty as advisor and general to the king was of war. Or rather, it was about whether to prepare for a war—if one was likely and if it was even worth fighting back. He had missed most of Annatar’s arrival and subsequent dismissal by Ereinion while away on his final trip searching for Maglor before he officially took up the position. It had been part of the deal. He had also missed the gradual downfall of his cousin.

“Sauron.” Elrond said, testing the name against his tongue. It tasted sour. Ereinion nodded. 

“Celebrimbor thinks that it’s over, now. Or, at least, that it’s over for him.”

“No,” Elrond breathed. But he knew that he was right. Those who defied Sauron so blatantly rarely survived. Ereinion shook his head, then held pulled out a ring from his pocket and held it up to the light. It was a gorgeous thing that reflected the shards of sun that came through the window into prismatic beams.

“I have a feeling—a premonition that this might be the last gift he ever gives me.”

“I will go to Eregion and defend him.” Elrond clenched his fist. Ereinion nodded. For a moment Elrond felt his own premonition; the image that he had kept in his head of his own realm, like the house on the hill with its round windows and gardens, obscured from intruders by the subconscious workings of his and his brother’s Maiarin inheritance. It pieced itself together in his mind and announced itself in bold lettering as the backup plan. The failsafe. Because they would fail. There was no other way that this could go. 

“Just be careful—Elrond, you’re like a brother to me. I don’t want to lose you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please comment and all that! I've put a lot of time and effort in, alongside loads of details and I love it when people notice them and then tell me that they noticed them!! (I've seen some pushback against asking for comments on tumblr, so I do want to reiterate that I, being a chronically and mentally ill person do understand that sometimes you don't have the energy to comment, but this is something I spend hours of time on after my already exhausting day job and then publish for free!! The validation is what makes it worth it!)
> 
> Again, link to the discord: https://discord.gg/BCUPDan


End file.
